Chapter Text
"May your past be the sound
Of your feet upon the ground."
- "Carry On" by Fun.
Silence falls and Hal falls with it, crashing to the dust and debris around him.
No more light. No more power. In the back of his mind, the gauntlet attached to his arm whines unintelligibly. No words, no instructions. Just confusion and struggle and then it too gives way to silence.
Above, the swirl of asteroids and gases whose names are buried somewhere in his mind stand in silent witness to the swath of destruction rent across a galaxy in some hidden corner of the universe. Not too far, or the distant skies would be filled with the eerie gaze of half living monuments. Not too close, or the boundless space wouldn’t feel quite so lonely.
It’s over.
It’s a struggle to keep his eyes open, but he doesn’t dare close them to the dark expanse dotted with light. If this is going to be where he finally falls, breath laboring against the dissipating atmosphere in the aftermath of desperation, he wants to see the sky. No matter how foreign. No matter how alone.
< Hal Jordan of Earth… >
Brown eyes widen sharply at the sudden, familiar tones, and he instinctively bends an indomitable will to the task of pushing himself up again. It couldn’t be a ring. There is no Corps to give it. Where would it possibly-?
< … you have the ability to instill great fear. >
It isn’t a ring that appears before him in a blaze of yellow light, however.
“If you are quite finished, Jordan.”
He can’t help the breathless laugh that escapes weakly in the disappearing air around them, nor does he particularly try. The atmosphere is siphoning off, and before him a savior not as unlikely as he would like to think simply waits, a yellow ring hovering in the wreath of energy between them, but Sinestro makes no move to aid him. Soon, there won’t be enough air to breathe and Hal is wasting it on painful wheezes and the shuddering gasps that follow.
“… Yeah,” he sighs out, setting his hands beneath him by sheer force of will. The gauntlet cracks and groans as he pushes himself up, unsteadily shoving his feet beneath himself, and then falls blissfully silent again. “Yeah,” Hal repeats, this time louder as he sways to his feet, the ripped rags of his coat drifting softly after in the thinning air. “I’m done.”
The ring flies forward before either of them can move, slipping on to Hal’s left hand in a flash of yellow light. It shoots down his arm in a split second, flaring out over his clothes in a black and gold barrier to the vacuum surrounding them. The gauntlet and its pack drop, abandoned to the rocky dust at their feet. He looks up.
Sinestro meets his gaze with a smug curl of his lips, and extends a hand. “Welcome to my Corps, Hal Jordan.”